The Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) campaign and Steering Committee members of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) held a webinar (Passcode: =bpN8D5V) on February 18 exploring the connections between gender justice and housing. Speakers from NWLC, NNEDV, and the OSAH campaign provided background information on the roots of the U.S. housing crisis and its impacts on women and LGBTQIA+ people’s economic insecurity; discussed why access to stable, affordable housing is foundational to positive outcomes for women and LGBTQIA+ people and their families; highlighted the prevalence of housing insecurity issues faced by survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV); and shared how the OSAH campaign works with multi-sector organizations to shift the narrative around affordable housing to include diverse perspectives. A storyteller from Sparking Change, a NWLC storytelling initiative, shared her own experiences with housing insecurity and the experiences of individuals and families she works with as a client advocate with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). The webinar concluded with an overview of key findings and advocacy messaging guidance from focus groups and national polling conducted by NWLC and Hit Strategies in 2024.
Watch a recording of the webinar here (Passcode: =bpN8D5V). To request a transcript of the recording please contact Sarah Hassmer at [email protected].
Webinar speakers included:
- Sarah Hassmer, Director of Housing Justice at NWLC.
- Talia Grossman, housing legal fellow at NWLC.
- Elana Hampton-Stover, Director of Housing at NNEDV.
- Chantelle Mitchell, storyteller with Sparking Change and client advocate with MUSC.
- Chantelle Wilkinson, director of the OSAH campaign.
- Courtney Kronenberg, research manager at HIT Strategies.
- Ross Miletich, senior analyst at HIT Strategies.
Sarah Hassmer opened the webinar by providing a brief overview of the U.S. housing crisis, highlighting that the country’s foundation built on colonization, dispossession of indigenous communities, and slavery are inextricable from the discriminatory housing policies and markets today. While the national shortage of affordable and available housing affects all renters, single women and LGBTQIA+ people who rent are more likely to have extremely low incomes and be cost-burdened. Talia Grossman followed this overview by talking about why affordable housing is foundational to all aspects of life for women, LGBTQIA+ people, and their families, highlighting the impact of affordable housing on health care, nutrition, childcare, education, employment, and environmental justice.
Elana Hampton-Stover discussed the housing needs for survivors of IPV based on data from the annual NNEDV Domestic Violence Counts Report, which provides a 24-hour snapshot of the number of adults and children served by domestic violence shelters and programs and the number of requests that went unmet due to lack of resources. In the 2023 count, housing and shelter were the most common service provided and comprised the most unmet needs requests. Hassmer went on to discuss how IPV is often a contributing factor to people experiencing homelessness, and that their homelessness is often compounded and prolonged by violence and that women and LGBTQIA+ people are also disproportionately impacted by IPV.
Chantelle Mitchell spoke about her family’s experiences with housing insecurity and homelessness and cited the disparity between wages and rental housing prices, tradeoffs between paying for rent, childcare, and food for her family, and a lack of available financial assistance as factors that led to evictions. She also emphasized the mental and physical impacts of eviction and the dehumanizing aspects of eviction that she and families she works with experienced. Mitchell called for more resources to ensure families can afford safe and stable housing.
Chantelle Wilkinson provided an overview of the OSAH campaign and its work with national and state multi-sector partners to frame the issue of housing as central to all issue areas. She outlined the campaign’s organizational partners made up of Steering Committee members, Opportunity Roundtable members, and State campaigns and reviewed the campaign’s national policy agenda. Wilkinson also highlighted recent campaign events and resources, including multi-sector fact sheets, and shared ways to get involved with the national and state campaigns.
Courtney Kronenberg reviewed focus groups and polling Hit Strategies conducted in partnership with NWLC from September to November 2024. Two phases of research were conducted to better understand opinions and values around housing justice and identify messaging that can successfully build support for centering women, particularly women of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people. Five focus groups were held, followed by a national poll of 1,000 general population adults and oversamples of Black women, Latina women, LGBTQIA+ people, and Asian American and Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander (AANHPI) women to ensure representation of these priority audiences. Results showed that cost of living and inflation is by far the most important issue to respondents, and a lot of anxieties around cost are related to cost of housing and rent. Groceries and food are the most stressful expenses, followed by housing costs, and housing costs are the biggest stressor for Black women and AANHPI women.
The poll makes it clear that all people, regardless of race, gender, or income, deserve more affordable housing access and a better economy that works for them while holding people in power accountable. They recommend messaging that centers women of color, especially Black women, to help people better understand the struggle marginalized communities face, emphasizes that affordable housing lives under a larger umbrella of cost issues to help people connect the cost of housing with basic needs like groceries, establishes housing as a right for everyone, and contrasts the wealthy profiting off of rising housing costs with average people struggling to keep up with rising rents.